Within National Socialism you have, all sorts of loyal Nazis.
Some who are devoted to the cult of Hitler, others who share a broader
right wing racist ideology, nationalism and xenophobia and antisemitism.
Others that are sheer opportunists, hope to get ahead by aligning with the winners.
And others that simply aren't much capable of making up their own minds and simply
follow whoever seems to be in power.
So all of these align, in a sense with Hitler, he mobilizes
different Germans in different ways.
But above all, as Ian Kershaw said, at the heart of the way in which National
Socialism functioned was that people were striving to work towards the Führer.
It is not top down orders, but in a sense all sorts of people striving to be the
ideal Nazi, to be the loyal Hitler right.
And to win Hitler's favor, particularly among the big power
brokers, by anticipating and doing what Hitler wants without having
to be told when and how to do it.
So you have this competitive system in which if Hitler takes a problem seriously
and he takes the "Jewish problem" seriously,
they are going to be competing with one another to come up with more
drastic, more radical and ever more final solutions to this total problem.
In a sense, total problems require total solutions.
And so for the eternal Jewish problem, a final solution who can
come up with the most final of final solutions is going to be the one
that has Hitler's strongest favor.
So you have in a sense, both the ideology and the mechanisms and
functioning of the Nazi regime that dovetail into a very lethal combination.
That will lead through trial and error and competition, to a
consensus of destroying the Jews, when other alternatives don't work,
and this then it proves that it's easier to kill Jews, ultimately
than it is to expel them or to drive them out, to have them immigrate.
And so by trial and error, the Nazis come then to the policy of total mass murder.
Now that happens in 1941, and I would say that decision is not a decision,
but a series of incremental decisions.
Almost no historian now believes in a kind of Big Bang theory that at
one day, at one moment, Hitler took a decision and that settled things.
What you have, I would argue, is two incremental decision making processes.
From the spring to the summer of 1941, a series of decisions that
bring Germany to the policy of total mass extermination of Soviet Jewry.
And then from the summer to the late fall of 1941, an incremental decision
process in which they come to expand that policy of total and systematic
mass murder to the Jews of the rest of Europe under German control.
So there's two decisions, two phases, and both of these stretch over a number
of months as these ideas crystallize.
So it isn't like a light bulb going on or a big bang.
What you have is a crystallization of realization that this has to be
done and this is how one would do it.
And the Nazi leadership and Hitler approving that at the end
of that process in which people are making various suggestions.
In a sense moving the needle ever closer to a policy of total
and systematic extermination.
And I've argued that one of the key factors that psychologically
make this happen in 1941 is, what I call the euphoria of victory.
When Hitler's invasion of Soviet Union in the first four weeks go
so extra ordinarily successfully,
they are deep into Russia, and it captured several million prisoners of war, it looks
like the Soviet Union is about to fail.
Hitler is emboldened, he feels that all the obstacles that have stood in
his way in the past now fallen aside, and in a sense, he can dare the most.
And then there is a pause and a delay on the Eastern front, and offensive
is renewed in September, October.
Remember since September, they encircle Leningrad, they capture Kiyv.
And in early October, the drive to Moscow, they have the double encirclement
victory of Brysman and Bryansk,it looks like the road to Moscow is open.
That is the second euphoria of victory that leads Hitler to give
the nod of the head the approval to expanding the extermination
policy to the rest of Europe.
So that you have these two periods of incremental decision making, driven
in part by a euphoria of victory.
And always in the end needing Hitler's ultimate approval.
And so I see summer of 1941 as the turning point, the point of beyond no return one
might say, for the fate of Soviet Jewry.
By late October, you have passed the rubicon, you've gone past
the tipping point in terms of the fate of the rest of European Jews.
And what really has happened here is, one has shifted from a policy
of expulsion and decimation now to one of total extermination.
The key thing, up until the fall of 1940-1941, the Nazi ultimate
plan was to chase Jews out.
After October 1941, the idea is to keep them in, this is when emigration ends.
This is when the emigration gates are sealed, no Jews are to escape, because
the new policy is to keep them and murder them, not to expel and decimate them.
So the final turning point I place really very closely tied to Himmler
and Heydrich's decision to ban any further Jewish escape from Europe
to the third week of October in 1941.